Each generation feels the same (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Each generation feels the same

In response to G Scott's letter of June 11 I had to smile at the rose-coloured glasses view!

I expect that back in 1970 similar views were held by people who once remembered the fields that had been covered by the developments of Penhill. Pinehurst and even Parks and Walcot.

I guess they would have complained about the "ever expanding Swindon" and the "faceless housing estate developments" that G Scott seems to wish had never been built.

I dare say that some people threw up their hands in horror and said that the existing small shopping area in the town centre would not be able to cope with this influx of new people.

There would have been worries about the strain on existing leisure facilities, healthcare and schools.

In other words this idyll that once was Swindon in the 1970s would have been hated by the generation before G Scott because it was bigger than the town they had grown up with. Wake up G Scott!

The development that you condemn has given us the Oasis, the Link Centre, the GWH, the Outlet Village, the Brunel Centre, numerous new schools, the M4, numerous new roads and much more.

Towns change, some of the change will be for the worse because it is not as you remember it from your childhood but much of what I have named IS better.

The generation before you would probably condemn you for letting Swindon change as it did after the war.

Towns change, get over it and move on.

I Howard

Westlea